The hypothesis of the proposed project is that the identification of chromosmal abnormalities associated with ovarian carcinoma will provide significant information useful for 1) determining individual patient prognosis 2) developing in vitro diagnostic criteria for various tumor cell types 3) understanding tumor progression in going from borderline malignant to overtly malignant carcinoma and 4) identifying cytogenetic changes associated with drug resistence. The key to the successful completion of this project is the use of culture dishes coated with an extracellular matrix (ECM). The significant advantages of this system allow for 1) a high percent (80%) of successful primary cultures 2) a high percent (80 to 90%) of cultures in which a suitable number of metaphases can be obtained for analysis 3) simultaneous investigation of multiple in vitro characterizations which can be compared with the cytogenetic findings and 4) the establishment of a significant number of long term cultures which provide a large number of cells for investigation. Tumor cells derived from ascitic fluid samples or solid tumor specimens require only 48 to 72 hours of in vitro culturing on ECM-coated culture dishes in order to obtain suitable metaphases after Colcemid treatment. The long term objectives are to develop improved techniques for examining chromosomes in human ovarian carcinoma cells and to determine the potential importance of cytogenetic analysis of ovarian tumors with respect to individual patient diagnosis and treatment. Information from this project may directly benefit individual patients as well as provide significant insight into the biology of human gynecologic carcinomas.